This is an update of a previous interview with Michael O’Brien discussing his latest book A Voyage to Alpha Centauri (Ignatius)

Michael O’Brien, A Catholic novelist discusses his latest book A Voyage to Alpha Centauri as he enters the realm of Sci-Fi to discuss the issues of a Secular World verses a Christian reality. He spoke with Catholicismanew.org editor, Fr. Robert J Carr

Here you are a Catholic writer, a Catholic novelist, and this, I understand, is your first novel in Science Fiction. How do you bring Catholicism and Science Fiction together?

My approach is different than that of most writers of science fiction. Most contemporary science fiction focuses on technological wonders and tends to move more and more in the direction of pseudo mysticism combined with technology. There are a lot of preternatural and supernatural elements in modern sci-fi, which I think is because there is such a void in modern man, who has not received authentic spirituality and real thought. So he is very limited, very fragmented.

 

In my book, I tell the story of a 19-year round trip journey to the star closest to our solar system, Alpha Centauri. A lot happens on this huge space ship that comes from Earth. With more than six hundred people onboard there are many dramas that take place during the outward bound voyage. Some of the people are clandestine Christians, mostly Catholic. Most of the crew are not. The story is set 100 years in the future, at a time when the world has become very secularized, a kind of neo-totalitarian world where the state rules everything.
I express our Faith through the fictional characters, their moral characters and their personalities, their struggles—both believers and non believers. I would say that the defining part of the story is about faith, about the destiny of the Universe itself, and redemption. As Christ redeemed the universe he is restoring it to the Father through the long process of salvation history, which is not yet completed.

 

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot because there are some big surprises when the explorers arrive on one of the planets surrounding one of the stars of Alpha Centauri. In essence, the story examines our understanding of reality and what is God’s action and presence in the material universe—He is at work even if we deny the existence the existence of the redemption, the existence of the Trinity.

 

When man goes on this space voyage, we basically bring ourselves into the infinite ocean, if you will, and that means our beautiful qualities and also our fallen nature, our good and evil pit into the universe. What I try to ask through the drama and the plot line and the characters is what are we really looking for, what are we hungering for, when we go out beyond our known universe? Is it just more knowledge? We always want knowledge, of course, but is it really something more that we are seeking? I believe it is a kind of hunger for transcendence.

 

That is a powerful question. Who are some of your influences from a Catholic perspective?

 

I very much love J.R.R. Tolkien. He is not overtly teaching through his great epic, The Lord of the Rings and in his other work, but he is implicitly Catholic. Tolkien’s world is an incarnational universe, a universe in the process of being redeemed. Although it’s fantasy, the struggle between good and evil is very much faithful to reality.

I also love the novels of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I suppose there are a host of influences, but I would say Dostoevsky has been one of the great influences on my way of thinking, my way of seeing, though as a Catholic.

 

It is interesting that you bring up Solzhenitsyn. Now I am here in Boston and I grew up here. Are you aware of the famous talk that Solzhenitsyn gave to Harvard. . .

 

Yes, I read it often.

 

And I know that is one of the themes of your book, the whole totalitarian aspect which we see in secularism, which he warned against we were walking down that path. I think many people today can say he was being very prophetic.

 

Yes, I would agree, and each passing year we see more and more confusion, darkness and increased statism, increased loss of the rights of the family, rights of freedom of speech. These are issues which you as Americans are sensitive to, because of your history, your constitution, your origins, but it is also a grave concern for Roman Catholics. Fundamental human rights are being violated by not only tyrannical regimes, but even by the new democracy, let’s call it. This is a crucial issue, one central to all my books. Integrity of the human person and the rights of the family must be defended at all costs, if we hope to have a humane civilization.

What Science Fiction writers influenced you?

I would have to say that I have hardly read any Sci-Fi since I was a boy. It is not really a genre that I love all that much. I think it is interesting, it raises good questions sometimes, but I have no real influences in that way.

I suppose you could say that my Voyage to Alpha Centauri is not a typical sci-fi novel. It’s theological speculative science fiction….

If we banish metaphysical questions, spiritual questions, from our fiction, we are tragically stunting our ability to reflect on what it is to be human. An arbitrary limiting of our vision makes us less able to grapple with the crucial questions of the modern age. What I try to do in my work is to expand vision and to raise bigger questions